


Starting Over

by rahleeyah



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:34:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28833501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rahleeyah/pseuds/rahleeyah
Summary: Written for the Jeanuary Big Bang on Tumblr, prompt is: the Sunroom. Thomas Blake shows Jean around her new home.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Starting Over

"I hope you'll find it to your liking, Mrs. Beazley," Thomas Blake said as he swung open the door to the bedroom and gestured for Jean to step inside. "This room is closest to the bathroom, but of course as we've no boarders at the moment you'll have the entire upstairs to yourself."

"Thank you, Doctor Blake," Jean said as she stepped inside.

She felt terribly out of place, at present. Her best blue dress was no match for Doctor Blake's fine brown suit, and the leather handbag she clutched in her hands had seen better days. Everything in this big, beautiful house spoke of money, of taste, of class, of respectability, and there was still a bit of dirt on the bottom of Jean's good suede pumps; she'd cleaned them before she left home, but the journey from her front door to the driver's seat of her rusty old car had messed them up again, the way it always did. Doctor Blake wouldn't know anything about that; the drive where he parked his car was paved and spotless, and he did not have to dance around a flock of languid chickens pecking at the dirt to get to his car. They were quite unevenly matched, Jean and Doctor Blake, and she felt the difference in their stations most keenly.

An invitation had been extended, and so Jean stepped into the room, took a deep breath and spun slowly on her heel, examining the place that was to be her home, now. The walls were painted a rosy sort of color, one of them covered in new floral wallpaper. The room boasted its own fireplace, and a wide bay window overlooking the garden. There were no curtains on the window, and so she could clearly see the garden beyond, brown and bare in winter. This room was bigger than the room where she slept at home, the room she had once shared with her husband, the room where she had delivered both of her sons. That room had no fireplace, and its windows looked out onto the farm, not a high wooden fence and the town beyond.

"I took the liberty of removing the furniture," Doctor Blake said, a bit stiffly. "I imagine you'd like to have your own things."

"I would, thank you," Jean answered. She'd been worried about that. After a lifetime living in her little farmhouse she'd gathered all sorts of things she was loath to part with, including the wooden bed frame her father had constructed himself, as a wedding present for Jean and Christopher. Having her own things would make this place feel more like home, she thought, but she had no notion of how she'd manage to get them from the farmhouse to Doctor Blake's upstairs. It seemed he'd thought of that, too, however, for he continued in a moment.

"I've spoken to Constable Parks and some of the lads at the station. If you're agreeable, they'll come out to the farm first thing Saturday morning with a truck, and move your belongings for you."

"Oh, that would be wonderful," Jean said honestly, "but I don't want anyone to go to any trouble."

Doctor Blake frowned beneath his bushy grey mustache.

"In my experience, Mrs. Beazley, young men are always keen for a way to make a bit of extra money, and moving your things won't be so very difficult. They're glad to do it, and I'll pay them for the service."

"Thank you," Jean said again. She'd been saying that rather a lot today, but she didn't know how else to respond. Doctor Blake had been so kind to her, offering her this job, a room in his house to stay, offering to spend his own money to have her things moved from one place to another. With young Christopher joining the army and Jack in Melbourne Jean had been quite alone, and the farm had been failing for years. Ben Dempster had a new wife and money to burn after receiving a hefty inheritance from his father, and all the pieces seemed to have fallen into place. There was no sense staying on the farm alone, losing money by the day and watching her circumstances grow grimmer, and Doctor Blake had offered her lodgings and better pay than she'd ever hoped for, and two days off a week besides.

"There's room in the attic for anything you'd like to store," Doctor Blake said. "Not much room, mind you, but if you've a few boxes of mementos, that sort of thing, you can keep them there."

"That would be lovely," Jean said. Half the farmhouse was in boxes already, the other half marked for sale. She could direct Danny and the lads to the things that needed to go, and leave the rest until the auction in a fortnight's time. Ben had already offered to buy the equipment and her old car, and all in all, everything seemed to be working out perfectly. She should have been happy, and she knew it.

And yet she wasn't, not really. How could she be happy, without her boys, knowing that she'd failed, that she hadn't been able to keep the farm alive, knowing that she was about to give away the one thing in the world her Christopher had loved almost as much as his family? That farm had been his dream, everything he'd ever wanted, his favorite place in the whole world, and she was passing it off to someone else, in favor of taking up lodgings in a stranger's home. In _Doctor Blake's_ home, Doctor Blake who was everything Christopher had always despised. He was not an unkind man, Doctor Blake, but he was...well. He was _Doctor Blake._ With his expensive clothes and his flash car, a member of the Colonists' and the Masons, when Doctor Blake walked down the pavement people parted before him like the sea before Moses, and he would never spare a word for a man like Christopher. Likely, he never even would have seen him.

 _But he's helping you when you need it most, and you'll be grateful to him,_ Jean reminded herself.

"I'll show you the rest of the house," Doctor Blake said, and with that they left the pink bedroom behind, and ventured once more down the stairs.

"Dinner on the table at six o'clock," he said as they went. "You're free to do whatever you like in the kitchen, I'm not particular about food. I would like tea made by the time I'm dressed in the morning, and that's usually around seven."

"Of course," Jean agreed. That was a schedule she could keep; she was up with the sun anyway, and it would be no trouble to have Doctor Blake's breakfast ready for him when he woke. She had always appreciated routine, and she knew she was a dab hand in the kitchen. With time she was certain she'd learn his preferences - whatever he might say, a man of his station would surely have opinions about his dinner - and she imagined they could get on comfortably together.

"You're welcome to join me in the sitting room in the evenings," Doctor Blake said, gesturing towards it as they made their way into the kitchen. "And you can help yourself to any of the books in there. I cannot abide the television and I ask that you not play the piano, but otherwise you're free to do as you like."

Although she wondered why he had purchased a television if he did not care for it, the arrangement he'd laid out suited Jean just fine. She had no television of her own at home, and though she could play well enough it had been years since she'd sat at a piano bench. It had been a worry for her before now, how she might spend her evenings, whether Doctor Blake would expect her to disappear up the stairs once she'd finished washing the dinner things, and she was glad to know he wouldn't mind her presence in the downstairs. What they might say to one another, whiling away a quiet evening together, she had no idea, but she'd make do. She always did.

"This is the back entrance to the house," Doctor Blake said, leading her through a doorway in the corner of the kitchen and out into a sunroom. "I prefer that guests use the front door, but if you've a need you can come in this way."

For a moment Jean stood, clutching her handbag, staring at the sunroom. It was, she thought, quite the saddest thing. The room had wide, beautiful windows to let in the wan winter sunlight, and there were trellises and tables and pots stacked haphazardly around a comfortable grouping of wicker furniture. It could have been a beautiful place, full of growing things, the green of life and the cheerful shades of flowers in bloom, but instead it was empty, and dusty, and altogether uninviting. Why anyone would venture into the house through this room she couldn't say. The Blake house was sprawling and beautiful and well-cared for, but this room itself was an eyesore, rotting on the vine while the rest of the house bloomed.

"My last housekeeper didn't have much of a green thumb," Doctor Blake said by way of explanation, perhaps seeing some of Jean's distress on her face. "And I can't be bothered with it myself. Ron Williams tends to the garden, but I've never seen much point in bothering with plants in here."

Disappointment festered low in Jean's belly. With a bit of time, a bit of care, she rather thought this room could be made beautiful. It could be a wonderful place to sit with a cup of tea and a book, to entertain friends perhaps, out of Doctor Blake's way. It could be cheerful, and bright, could be made whole again, with a bit of work, but if Doctor Blake was not interested in it, all that potential would continue to fester unrealized. It was a terrible waste, and Jean was eager to put it to rights - if Doctor Blake would let her.

"I think," she said very slowly, "if you don't mind, I might like to make a project of it. I'd use my own money, of course, I wouldn't trouble you with it, but it might be nice to have some flowers about."

"It might," Doctor Blake allowed. He was looking at her speculatively, his sharp blue eyes intent upon her face. "What did you have in mind?"

That he had not only agreed to her proposal but seemed interested in her thoughts on the subject gave Jean cause to hope. She had worried, before now, that the man might ignore her presence in the house completely, might never look up from his newspaper, might carry on as if she were not there at all, blithely ignorant to the presence of the help the way most of the moneyed folks in town were. And yet he had gone to the trouble of arranging help with moving her things, and made sure she had room to store her belongings in the attic, and now he seemed keen to hear what she had to say on the subject of reviving this corner of his own house.

"Well," Jean said, looking around her and trying to imagine how best she might use this space. "Tomatoes, I think, there," she gestured towards a trellis in the corner, "and that planter would be nice for herbs. Fresh is always best." Doctor Blake might not have been particular about his food, but Jean was. Every meal she cooked was made with care, and she had been too long a farmer's wife - and a farmer herself - to so easily give up the business of growing her own food entirely. "It's warm enough in here for begonias, I think. I might even be able to grow something you could enter in the festival." That would please him, she thought, having a prize begonia beneath his roof. He wasn't the sort of man much given to frivolity, and she rather thought that beauty for beauty's sake would not interest him. But fresh food to eat - saving him on grocery expenses - and a plant he could brag about, that might be enough to bring him firmly onside.

"And there's a bare spot, just there," she said, pointing through the window, past the tangled vines of the dormant rose bush to an empty patch of earth. "If you don't mind, I've a gold tooth aloe that would be lovely there."

The aloe grew along the back of the farmhouse, at the edge of the lettuce field. For the last seventeen years she had carefully tended to the aloe, watched it grow alongside her children, bright and merry. It was dear to her, so dear that she lamented its loss almost as much as the loss of the farm itself, but now she saw a better way. She couldn't move the whole plant, particularly not now, but come spring she could ride out to the farm and take a cutting - with Ben and Ruth Dempster's permission, of course - and bring it back here, plant it in the rich soil of Doctor Blake's back garden and watch it grow once more. She could not keep the farm, but she could keep a piece of it, a memory she could see, and touch, and nurture as she nurtured her own heart.

 _People are like plants,_ her mother had told her once. _We need a place to plant our roots, or else we'll blow in the wind like a seed, and never grow into anything more._ Jean hadn't believed that when she was young, when her heart had longed for freedom and adventure, for the chance to explore the wide world. Now, though, so many years later, she rather thought her mother had been right. A person needed a home, a place to plant their roots, in order to grow their lives into something more. Jean herself was in the process of being uprooted, but as she stared around that room she told herself that perhaps this was not an ending at all. A plant might outgrow its pot; its roots might become tangled and stunted, with nowhere to grow. Soil needed changing, and sometimes to save a flower it had to be moved into a bigger pot. _That's all this is,_ she told herself. Her roots could grow, here, in fresh soil, in bright sunlight.

"That seems like a fine plan to me," Doctor Blake told her.

 _You can do this,_ Jean told herself. Though her heart had been full of trepidation at the start of this day she now found it replaced by hope. She could grow things, as she had always done, could speak courteously to Doctor Blake and be treated courteously in turn. She could turn this haunted shell of a room into a place of beauty, and she could watch her flowers grow, along with her fragile heart. She could see it now, the hours spent in this place, the careful pouring of soil and planting of seeds, the endless watering and the joy of new life. She could see herself here, in this room, with a cup of tea and a book in her hands, the sunlight on her face, the fresh scent of flowers wafting on the air, her aloe thriving just beyond the window. She could see it, and she took joy in it, and she knew in that moment that the sunroom had just become her favorite spot in the entire house. In that room her hands would be busy and her heart would be at peace, and she could think of nothing better.


End file.
